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Sunday, June 4, 2017

Some Thoughts on Anglo-Saxon Laws

Reading the various edicts and declarations
in the “Laws” section of the Anglo-Saxon World Anthology was a bit of an
experience. I am no legal expert, but it is as the section introduction makes
clear: “One does not need to be in the legal profession to find the Anglo-Saxon
law code fascinating” (24). There is a lot of minutia which reinforces the fact
that these law codes were the basis for our modern code. While obvious much is
different, we can see similarities in how property was treated and regarded and
how religious practices intertwined with political necessity.

What
I saw was a great emphasis on monetary payments as a form of punishment;
whether one was laboring on the holy day, breaking the church’s protection, or
stealing food, or even defaming the king, the punishment was usually either a
fine or flogging; one can almost see how things like this evolved into
contemporary fines for all sorts of minor violations. Combined with the
insights on foreigners and marriage, it is eerie how direct one can chase the
path from the past to today.

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Since
this section is so short, and the other two sections do not deal with much that
I find fascinating, I wanted to share one or two noteworthy articles from “The
Laws of Wihtred”.

Point
#3 says: “Men living in illicit cohabitation are to turn with a right life with
repentance of sins, or to be excluded from the fellowship of the church”.

I
wonder what this means. Specifically, if it is a pot-shot at same-sex relations
in addition to incestuous and adulterous relations. I feel that it is but that
may also be giving the law too much credit. I actually have a book on
homosexuality in the Anglo-Saxon period, so I should read it to find out.

Point
#12 says: “If a husband sacrifices to devils without his wife’s knowledge, he
is to be liable to pay all his goods and healsfang;
if they both sacrifice to devils, they are to be reliable to pay healsfang and all their goods” (27).

This
stood out the most out of all the points. Since I have been studying a bit up
on witchcraft lately in the ancient, medieval, and early modern periods, and
know a bit of the religious hoopla around devils and Satan, I find this odd.
Now, I have no idea what “healsfang” is but the edict does not seem to condemn
the sacrifice to devils. This actually makes sense; after all, the conversion
of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity was a fraught process and even when those
who convert did adhere to Christianity, it was not uncommon for them to still
maintain pagan alters and practices (so it was essentially a hybrid theology,
though not a condoned one by the Church officials). I am just curious on the
idea of ‘devils’, which, though I assume is an encoding of the old, pagan Gods,
is still a loaded term without it being used in an exclusively condemnatory
manner.